Two OPP officers have been cleared of criminal wrongdoing in connection with an arrest they made in the Listowel area.

Tony Loparco, the director of the Special Investigations Unit, says the officers acted properly and did not use excessive force as they arrested a 62-year-old man.

The officers were called to the home in Gowanstown on July 6, 2017, without knowing exactly what was going on. Dispatchers had received a 911 call asking for police assistance from a caller who hung up before offering any other details.

According to the SIU report, the officers arrived at the home to find a woman claiming that her husband had slapped her.

As they attempted to take the husband into custody for assault, the 62-year-old man allegedly resisted his arrest. The officers reported that they found the man to be “surprisingly strong” for his age, and attempted to take the man onto the home’s front lawn so it would be easier to handcuff him.

During the ensuing struggle, SIU investigators found, all three fell to the ground, with the 62 year old hitting his head on a patio stone. He suffered a fractured hip and assorted other injuries, including possible symptoms of a concussion.

The man complained to the SIU about his arrest, arguing that police used excessive force.

The SIU sought help from a medical expert, who found that the man’s hip injury was a type of injury typically only seen in car collision or falls from great heights. While the man’s fall was not far enough to cause the injury, the expert said, there could have been enough force to cause the fracture if the officers had fallen on top of the man, as he says they did. (One of the officers denies falling on the man, although Loparco noted that he may have been confused about what happened during the chaotic encounter.)

The medical expert did not believe that the fracture could have been the result of punches or other strikes. Even if it could have been, nobody involved in the incident suggested to the SIU that police may have delivered such blows.

Loparco found that there were no grounds to charge either police officer with any criminal offence, as they were using reasonable measures to bring a suspect under arrest.

“Taking the (man) to the ground in order to place him in handcuffs, when he repeatedly and consistently resisted the police officers and his arrest, was appropriate and could not be classified as an excessive use of force,” he said.

“(He) would not have been injured had he chosen not to fight the police officers who were trying to arrest him.”